New York: Poetry Or Chaos?

September 27, 1985

MIKE ROYKO wrote a column headlined, ''Only a twit can badmouth New York.'' Menandro de Mesa told in a letter of his fondness for New York City.

In his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera says, ''Beauty in the European sense has always had a premeditated quality to it . . . an aesthetic intention and long-range plan. The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms that are themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously, sparkle with a sudden wondrous poetry.''

De Mesa quotes Steinbeck as saying about New York, ''It is an ugly city. . . . But there is one thing about it that puzzles me -- once you have lived in New York, and it has become your home, no other place is good enough.'' Perhaps Steinbeck was saying what Kundera says, but in different words.

New York is easy to love -- and easy to hate -- and hard to leave forever. Kate Acosta Sciple